About raw food diet

“The last twenty years I made a regular effort to lead a healthy and balanced diet. I chose organic products, avoided processed food, limited red meat and I gradually became a vegetarian. But the decision that radically changed my life was one I made recently: I became a raw foodist. In the beginning, I was consuming 75% of food raw and I gradually adopted an exclusive raw food diet. The changes I experienced were spectacular. My stamina and strength were increased, I exercise on a regular basis and I feel full of energy, my skin and hair are glowing and my inner strength is much greater”, Ms Ira Koutoudi reports to the Vima journal. And she is not the only one.

To adopt a “raw food diet” means to eat our food in the form provided by nature, uncooked! That does not translate into nutritional monotony. Nature offers an incredible variety of foods and in addition, thanks to the previous generations of raw foodists we now have a whole art of cooking hearty and delicious gourmet meals, an art that continues to evolve supporting the raw food diet and rendering it more attractive to the broad audience. Without fruit, vegetable and nuts the planet would not be able to sustain life, neither animals nor humans!

Raw and “living” food

Raw and “living” food includes fruit, vegetable, nuts, legumes, cereal and sprouts. You also have herbs, charob powder, raw honey, tree syrups (such as maple syrup), unprocessed salt (crystalline salt), cold pressed olive oil, conservative-free organic oil and more.

If your question is how it is possible to consume raw lentils or uncooked cereal, raw foodists report that there are special techniques which allow us to eat everything raw in imaginative and creative combinations. “The dehydrator is widely used, a devise that uses hot air to remove humidity from food, without heating it to over 40 degrees. In that way, we can prepare “hot” dishes that are still raw. It’s the other way around for hard foods which are being soaked in water or cotton”, explains Ms Elli Lignos, a raw foodist and member of the «Troo Food Liberation» group. It’s a group that aspires to initiate the Greek public into the world of vegan and raw food diet, teaching us how to become “more aware consumers and realise the way that our nutritional choices affect our body, environment and local economy, but also the people living in distant places” as Danai Tsekoura explains, another group member. To support their cause, the «Troo Food Liberation» group cooks raw three days per week at the Feeder restaurant of Breeder gallery in the area of Metaxourgio, and at the same time they offer regular “anti-cooking” courses, where the Athenians learn how to be creative without the use of ovens and pans!